DATE & TIME
Saturday, March 25, 2023
9 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
9 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Conferences & lectures
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Sustainable Futures? Being with and Beyond 'Crisis'
SAGSA Annual Conference, with keynote by Kregg Hetherington
SPEAKER(S)
Kregg Hetherington
COST
This event is free
ORGANIZATION
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
WHERE
Henry F. Hall Building
1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Room H-1120
WHEEL CHAIR ACCESSIBLE
Yes
Concordia's Department of Sociology and Anthropology is proud to present the SAGSA annual conference, with Kregg Hetherington as the keynote speaker.
The Time of Ghost Rivers: Future histories of the urban environment
Several years ago, a group of students at Concordia University went looking for water and found a ghost. They weren’t alone in this.
Local activists, urban planners and eventually city officials all found themselves, over the past decade, drawn into relation with a long-forgotten river that, for different reasons, had begun to haunt local infrastructure.
In 2021 they even held a funeral, played the bagpipes, and tried to come to terms with a new form of mourning.
As this paper will argue, the appearance of ghost rivers is a kind of infrastructural inversion proper to the urban Anthropocene, conjured by shifting attention to landscapes of ecological destruction.
To know a ghost river is to understand underground pipes and legal histories, it’s to become aware of contamination and histories of disease, and it’s to reflect on the future of human cohabitation. But communing with a ghost, is also markedly different from worrying about crisis, or dreaming of sustainability.
Ghosts inhabit time otherwise, and as such they invite us to resituate our environmental futures and pasts.
About Kregg Hetherington
Kregg Hetherington is an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal, where he carries out research on the environment, infrastructure and the bureaucratic state.
He is also the director of the Concordia Ethnography Lab, which encourages interdisciplinary experimentation in comparative methodologies. His latest book, The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops (Duke 2020) recently won the Rachel Carson award from the Society for the Social Study of Science, along with two other awards.
Final Schedule
Session 1 — 9 to 11 a.m.
| Hall A (H-1120 SGW) (Hybrid) | Hall B (H-1124 SGW) |
Panel A Global crises and alternatives |
Panel B Dispossession and Belongingness |
Chair/Discussant Dr. Rhett Alexandr Cano-Jacome Concordia University |
Chair/Discussant Kregg Hetherington Director, Concordia Ethnography Lab (Montreal Waterways Research Group), Concordia University |
Engineering the Earth: The need to shift away from technical solutions to climate change Neve Sugars-Keen M.A Student, Carleton University |
Montreal waterways: How to tell the story of an island? John Neufeld M.A Student In Sociology At Concordia University Melina Campos Ortiz Ph.D. Student In Sociology At Concordia University Maya Lamothe-Katrapani M.A Student In Anthropology At Concordia University Amrita Gurung Ph.D. Student In Sociology At Concordia University
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Social Reproduction Theory, Energy Sovereignty And Climate Change As Class Warfare: Strategic Considerations For Life-Making In The Global North Ariel Becherer, Ma. Student, Carleton University |
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Making/Meat/Matter: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game Ali Kenefick Concordia University (Zoom) |
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Indigenous peoples, knowledge and water: Counter-hegemonic narratives towards power asymmetries and the water crisis Luisa Castaneda-Quintana Vanier Scholar Doctoral Candidate In Comparative Law Faculty Of Law, Mcgill University (Hybrid/Zoom) |
10:30 to 10:50 a.m. (Hall H-1120 SGW) Commodity Market As Model Systematic Racism Ed Canty General Manager, Cooperative Coffees |
| Coffee Break — 10:50 to 11:20 a.m. |
Session 2 — 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
| Hall A (H-1120 SGW) | Hall B (H-1124 SGW) |
Panel A Decolonization and Post-Humanism |
Panel B From Archiving to Storytelling: Digital Activism and Marketization
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Chair/Discussant David Howes Co-Director, The Center For Sensory Ethnography, Concordia University |
Chair/Discussant Chris Hurl Associate Professor, Concordia University
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Sustaining Decolonizing Efforts within a Canadian University Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Ph.D. Candidate In Sociology At Concordia University Ezgi Ozyonum Ph.D. Candidate In Education At Concordia University |
Archiving, Storytelling, and Community Care: Considering Queering the Map Hannah Grover Ph.D. Student Concordia University
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Disaster, Sovereignty, and the Anthropocene: On Architectural Dystopia and Transhuman Ecolegalities (Zoom) Giusto Amedeo Boccheni Doctoral Candidate In Comparative Law, Mcgill University |
Archiving the Internet: Research on Activist Editors and Archivers Elena Rowan Ma Sociology Student, Concordia University
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Humain, non-humain, post-humain: entre la désanthropologisation des sciences sociales et les enjeux globaux (Zoom) Christlord Foreste Doctorante-Chercheure A L'université De Montréal Et L'université Paris |
The Youthful Protester Motif: An exploration of how advertising campaigns have instrumentalized the image of protest and contributed to the reproduction of a capitalist horizon Isis Menteth Wheelwright Ma Sociology Student, Concordia University
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On Hilando Futuros as SF, or how to become datakin Melina Campos Ortiz Ph.D. Student In Sociology At Concordia University |
| Lunch break — 1 to 2 p.m. |
Session 3 — 2:10 to 3:40 p.m.
| Hall A (H-1120 SGW) | Hall B (H-1124 SGW) |
Panel A Seeing through hands touching through eyes |
Panel B Mapping Urban Space: Cultural Encounters, Violence And Coping Mechanism |
Chair/Discussant Martin French, Casino Ethnography Working Group, Concordia University |
Chair/ Discussant Hone Mandefro Belaye Phd Candidate, Concordia University |
Seeing through hands touching through eyes: A group autoethnography of the online casino Genevieve Collins, Researcher, Casino Ethnography Working Group, Concordia University Pierre-Olivier Jourdenais, Researcher, Casino Ethnography Working Group, Concordia University Amrita Gurung Researcher, Casino Ethnography Working Group, Concordia University |
Exposing The Urban Violence: The Importance Of Mapping Representations In Uncovering Deficiencies In Urban Design
Dr. Rhett Cano-Jácome Concordia University |
Gaming in the context of COVID-19: Emotion, experience and substituting the “real” for the “virtual.” Derek Pasborg Ma. Student At Sociology, Concordia University |
Coping Mechanisms Used By Taxi Drivers In Yaoundé, Cameroon, In Response To The Stresses Of Abrupt, Unanticipated Changes In Their Working Environment. Donita Nshani (Zoom) |
Affordance, Performance, And Pluriversality: Conceptual Frameworks For The Embodied Dimensions Of Cultural Life
Nathan Ferguson Ma Student At Concordia University |
Session 4 — 3:50 to 5:10 p.m.
Faculty Roundtable Sagsa Annual Conference 2023 “Sustainable Futures? Being with and Beyond ‘Crisis’” Saturday, 25 March, 2023 3:50 to 5:10 p.m. in H-1120 |
Sustainable development goals (SDGs) outline the dual role universities play in ensuring sustainable futures. First, they have to adopt sustainability frameworks by incorporating SDGs, and second, they need to foster sustainable futures through education. Following such calls, universities have increasingly aligned their missions over the last two decades to prepare students for real-life global challenges through applied and experiential learning. Indeed, universities have enormous training potential to enable students to not only face complex personal challenges but also help them secure sustainable futures for society. In light of such narratives, our faculty roundtable will explore the idea of universities as agents of social transformation. We ask whether recent moves toward “experiential learning” will help to render the university more responsive to sustainable development goals, or whether the buzzword "experiential learning" is only a new push to neoliberalize academia?
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Speakers: Christine Jourdan Mark K. Watson Beverly Best Theresa (Isa) Arriola Moderators: Carlos Velasquez and Carlos Olaya Diaz |
| Coffee break — 5 to 5:30 p.m. |
Session 5 — 5:35 to 6:30 p.m.
Keynote by Kregg Hetherington The Time Of Ghost Rivers: Future Histories of the Urban Environment Hall A (H-1120, SGW) |
| Final remarks followed by a vote of thanks! |